1. Establish Reporting Rules within the Finance Team
  2. Catch All Adjustments in an “Overs and Unders” Schedule
  3. Avoid a Huge Wave of Accounts Payable Invoices at Month-End
  4. Early Closing of the Accounts Payable Ledger
  5. Close Accruals before the Accounts Payable Cutoff
  6. Avoid Inter company Adjustments
  7. Early Closing-Off of Accounts Receivable
  8. Early Capital Expenditure Cutoff
  9. Early Inventory Cutoff
  10. From 5 p.m. Last Day to 5 p.m. First Working Day – The key steps
  11. Deliver a Flash Report at the End of Day 1
  12. Ban All Late Changes to the Month-End Report
  13. Stop Variance Reporting at Account Code
  14. Stop Monthly Reforecasting of Year-End
  15. Quality Assurance steps (checking internal consistency + the two person read through)

These steps are all discussed and templates provided in my toolkit  Fast close: A Guide to Rapid Month-end and Year-end Reporting- Toolkit (Whitepaper + e-templates) 

Have a look inside the toolkit